Tag Archives: one-party state

Though many feel we are stuck with a two-party system after numerous attempts to elect a viable alternative candidate have failed, a new Internet-based political movement is emerging. The goal? To put a presidential nomination on the 2012 ballot derived completely from open voting on the Internet. Called Americans Elect, the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization isn’t a traditional new political party, although it must register as one. Instead, it’s a way to nominate candidates in a more democratic fashion. So far, the group has submitted the required number of signatures to put a nomination on the ballot in eight states and has plans to be on 18 by year’s end. Democratic representation is an old idea that modern technology is reinventing, and the movement has the potential to change American politics forever…and that means 2012 will be an even wackier election year than it is already shaping up to be.

Finally, a mainstream media source – albeit a non-American one – has addressed the glaring need for a genuine leftist challenger in the upcoming presidential election. Medhi Hasan in the Guardian:

The tragedy is that Obama needs to be held to account – but from a leftwing, not rightwing, direction. He has embraced and affirmed a centre-right world view utterly at odds with his 2008 presidential campaign, with its promises of “change”, “reform” and a decisive break from the Bush-Cheney era.

Consider his record: he failed to close the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay; approved the use of military tribunals for detainees; “surged” 40,000 troops into Afghanistan; doubled the size of the detention facility at Bagram airbase; doubled the number of drone strikes inside Pakistan; gave CIA torturers immunity from prosecution; continued extraordinary rendition; said he didn’t “begrudge” bankers paying themselves multimillion-dollar bonuses’ ruled out a government-run “public option” on healthcare; froze pay for public sector workers; signed off on tax cuts for billionaires; vetoed a UN resolution condemning illegal Israeli settlement-building; and joined China in sabotaging the climate summit in Copenhagen.

That last paragraph summarizes pretty effectively just how atrocious Obama’s presidency has been thus far, in many respects dwarfing the horrific actions undertaken by the Bush administration. Indeed, if anything the American political spectrum has shifted even further to the right since the election of Obama; in addition to all of the Bush-esque monstrosities cited above, we are now engaged in additional wars in Yemen and Libya, and have exercised an extra-judicial assassination of a political and religious figure, while simultaneously violating the sovereignty of yet another Muslim nation.